Org Content Library (OCL)
In the 2024 Rosenfeld Media DesignOps Summit I was asked to lead a speaker cohort where one of the headliners spoke to the need to have content integrity across the organization before any LLM is given access, and his talk validated years of championing and pitching the value of intentional knowledge base efforts.
Our organizations already have a lot of invaluable knowledge content — and it all lives in drives, threads, inboxes, and memories not in the loop. But in a lot of places, it’s not accessible when folks need it. I conducted a knowledge listening tour for the design practice (and larger organization) in 2019 and found our national design practice was losing close to 2 million a year in time spent looking for “the right thing”, sometimes not even finding it.
An org’s knowledge should be treated like infrastructure. We should architect the conditions for understanding and utility on purpose, share it with everyone, and maintain it on a schedule.
I took the doc I put together the last time I pitched an org content library effort and turned it into an app with Claude. They doc and app cover what goes in, how it's named, who owns it, how it stays current. The app is designed to help folx output what they need to get started organizing and pitching their own OCLs with confidence.
Explore the highlights below - or jump straight to the app
Infrastructure with Intention.
An app to help you get from org content audit to the OCL pitch to leadership.
Assess Your Current State.
The app has a self-check tool to help you gauge the integrity of your org’s knowledge and how it’s shared/maintained.
Knowledge as Components.
In 2019, I pitched thinking of our knowledge base like an interconnected design system.
The app allows users to visualize the individual contents and different department needs — and then take a step back and look at it all like a content ecosystem, with each individual’s needs considered.
Empathy is key to asking people to change, slow down, and be intentional for their team members, today and in the future, when they’re sharing and saving knowledge.